Following Chief Justice John Roberts' decision upholding Obamacare's requirement to purchase health insurance as a constitutional tax, rather than an unconstitutional mandate, foes of the law saw an opening for Mitt Romney to attack Obamacare for raising taxes on the middle class. And so it seemed that the Romney campaign botched that line of attack when Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said on TV Monday that Romney “believes that you should not call the penalty a tax.” Amid conservative criticism, Romney reversed course on Wednesday, saying, "Well, the Supreme Court has the final word. And their final word is that Obamacare is a tax. So it's a tax."
The Obama campaign certainly seems to think the mandate is more politically damaging if it's described as a tax, so Romney's shift was probably smart politics. With that said, it would be a mistake for Republicans to neglect other problems with Obamacare by focusing their fire on the individual mandate. The case against Obamacare as a tax, after all, does not stand or fall on the individual mandate/tax alone. In other words, Obamacare is not "a tax"--it's lots and lots of taxes, and much, much more.
The individual mandate excise tax is indeed noxious both in principle and practice. It is not meant simply to prevent "free-riders" from bilking the system. If that were the case, people without health insurance would be given the choice to buy catastrophic insurance. But Obamacare gets rid of catastrophic plans and conscripts a relatively healthy and young population into purchasing cadillac plans to subsidize “They’re compelling us to enter into the marketplace,” he said, but “they’re prohibiting us from buying the only economically sensible product that we would want, catastrophic insurance.”
It Obamacare's employer mandate, for example, imposes a $2,000-per-job tax on businesses that employ 50 or more people but do not provide health insurance:
Americans for Tax Reform lists 21 new Obamacare taxes here. What Obamacare plans to do raise hundreds of billions in new taxes and cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare in order to pay for $2 trillion in new federal spending over 10 years.
catastrophic insurance. But Obamacare does away with catastrophic insurance and forces people to buy "min
What they are doing with the individual mandate is conscripting young healthy
It is yet another transfer of wealth from the young to the old.
but it will only directly affect the small number of voters who do not already have health insurance. FREE-RIDER NON-PROBLEM...
conscripting
It is a noxious command/tax someone for inactivity. ... The individual mandate excise tax...
employer mandate tax
tax on medical devices
plus Medicare cuts to pay for $2 trillion in spending over 10 years.
http://www.atr.org/tax-hikes-obamacare-scotus-rule-a6996
It is a tax that only applies to people who don't have insurance.
employer-mandate/tax
medical device taxes...
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